2. Governance and Public Perceptions
2.1 Data on “Public Trust”
2.2.3 Quality of Performance:
Evaluation of Quality of Service Delivery For the provision of some public and administrative services, legislation envisages shared competencies be-tween the bodies of central and local government. In all other cases, central government bodies are entirely
responsible for the provision of administrative serv-ices. According to this criterion, public services are divided into three provisional groups:17
• Public services delivered by the territorial units of central administrative structures (the army, police, the pension fund) or by state enterprises (electri-cal supply);
• Public services delivered by central and local ad-ministrative structures—territorial units of the central administration and units of municipal (local) administration (primary and secondary education, healthcare, social care, transport infra-structure, central heating); and
• Public services delivered by municipal administra-tions or by public organizaadministra-tions and legal bodies, such as trade associations owned by municipali-ties or legal bodies awarded with a public procure-ment contract (water supply, public transport).
Consequently, the quality of the provided services depends on the degree of coordination among com-petent bodies of central and local governments. The evaluation of the quality of administrative services is established through a system of indicators designed to monitor and evaluate the performance of administra-tive procedures. These indicators include: the number of services delivered within a given period of time; the time for service execution; the number of complaints and responses to these complaints; and service prices.
As well, the quality evaluation includes the establish-ment of communication with clients and access to information related to the respective administrative services.
Citizens’ Opinions
Surveys of clients’ satisfaction with administrative services show that they evaluate various aspects of service delivery in different ways. A public opinion poll on service delivery in Bulgaria, conducted in the summer of 2002,18 indicates that the greatest level of dissatisfaction is with bureaucratic procedures described as ineffective; when clients are redirected to different officers and units or even to different ad-ministrative structures; when they must present docu-ments which are already available in the municipality or documents which are not expressly mentioned in the regulation; and finally with the “excessive”
prolon-gation of procedures. Other aspects of administrative servicing that clients evaluate negatively include the speed of service delivery; the inconvenient work-ing hours of the institutions deliverwork-ing the services;
employees’ level of competence in executing services;
and the service results. Only one-third of cases were described positively.19
Public opinion polls indicate that the main reason for failure to express dissatisfaction with the quality of provided services is the widespread belief that appeal procedures would not produce the desired result. Nearly half those interviewed were convinced that their opinion/proposal or complaint would not produce a result. In one-third of the cases, the ad-ministration provided an answer to the proposal or complaint, but had not undertaken any actions. In only one-fifth of the cases had there been a positive development: after responding, the administration took all necessary actions (Figures 2 and 3).20
According to 40 percent of entrepreneurs, lodging a complaint regarding low quality service in a given institution will not produce a significant change. The main reason for not lodging a complaint in cases of low quality service is the belief that the complaint will not bring about the desired result. In addition to being time consuming, appeal procedures are de-scribed by entrepreneurs as excessively complicated;
most refuse to use this channel to defend their rights.
In only 4 percent of the cases, was the reason for not lodging a complaint a lack of information about the appeal procedure and its addressee. Nearly half of the surveyed business representatives believed that the delivery of higher quality municipal services would decrease corruption and abuses directly, while 40 percent believed it was possible.21 Nearly 10 percent of all clients saw the delivery of higher quality services as linked to the use of (personal) contacts.
Only 10 percent voiced satisfaction with the quality of the municipal administration. Over half of the interviewees could specify which administrative structures provide high quality service, while one-fifth were not satisfied with the quality of administra-tive service as a whole, regardless of whether it was delivered by the central administration, its territorial divisions, or regional or municipal administrations.22
When asked to which units of the executive power interviewees most often turn, half answered the municipal administration, while 15 percent pointed
Figure 2.
What Was the Outcome of Your Proposal or Complaint?
Source: Public poll on the provision of administrative services in Bulgaria, July 2002, Vitosha Research Agency, conducted for the One-Stop-Shops Project, DFID
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
0
21.1
Answer and take necessary
measures
28.9
Answer and take no measures
7.3
No answer but take necessary
measures
42.7
No answer and take no measures [Percent of
respondents]
Figure 3.
Do You Believe that Appeal Procedures Are Ineffective?
Source: Vitosha Research Agency 2002.
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
0
15.4
Yes
31.7
No
33.8
No opinion
19.1
Not applicable [Percent of
respondents]
to territorial divisions of the central administration.
Almost half of all respondents had visited the munici-pal administration on business less than once in three months, 15 percent visited at least once a month, and nearly 10 percent visited between one and four times a month.
In bigger cities (50,000 to 400,000 inhabitants),
nearly half of the respondents voiced dissatisfaction with the organization and quality of the administra-tive service. Specifically, 70 percent found survice de-livery to be slow, and more than 50 percent suggested that they do not receive competent information when using the services of the municipal administration. In Sofia (the capital), over two-thirds answered that
lo-cal authorities do not manage the major issues related to the delivery of basic public services. The results in smaller localities are slightly more favorable.
As indicated by Devnya (pop. 9,000) and Byala (pop. 2,000), citizens in less populated areas are much less dissatisfied with the delivery of administra-tive services. Officers do not have the workload typi-cal in bigger towns; in most cases, citizens and officers in the municipal administration know each other.
Opinions of Municipal Employees
In the process of conducting this study, we established certain practices that can be defined as rudimentary elements of the quality of administrative service. Mu-nicipal administrations keep statistics of the number of services delivered within a period of time, as required by the Public Administration Directorate at the Council of Ministers. These indicators, however, are not used by the decision-makers in the municipal administration for the purposes of monitoring, controlling and
plan-ning the quality of delivered administrative services.
Figures 4–6 present data by the Public Adminis-tration Directorate at the Council of Ministers on the number of services provided by municipal adminis-trations for the eight-month period between January and August 2001.
A study conducted among municipal administra-tion employees in Pazardzhik shows that few of the employees were satisfied with the organization of work in the municipal administration as a whole, but many of them were satisfied with the organization of work in their unit.23 Half of those interviewed found it hard to define the service provided by the municipal administration as fast or slow, while one-third defined it as slow.
The observed delivery procedures of some admin-istrative services reveal excessively and unnecessar-ily complicated procedures and redundant informa-tional flows.24 Clients are forced to make multiple visits to the municipal administration to perform all
Figure 4.
Provided Services per 10,000 Citizens
Source: Report of the Minister of Public Administration, January–August 2001.
5 10 15 20
0
3
1–500
25 30
13 14
26
28 28
25
14 13
9 13
9 8
7
4 3 4
1 6
1
501–1,000 1,001–1,500 1,501–2,000 2,001–2,500 2,501–3,000 3,001–3,500 3,501–4,000 4,001–4,500 4.501–5,000 5,001–5,500 5,501–6,000 6,001–6,500 6,501–7,000 7,001–7,500 7,501–8,000 8,001–8,500 8,501–9,000 9,001–9,500 9,501–10,000
Total provided services per 10,000 citizens [Number of
municipalities]
the actions necessary in order to receive a document.
The organization of service delivery is more oriented to the order of municipal administration employees’
work than to the actual interests of citizens. This method of organizing work in municipal administra-tions should not be observed in isolation. The multiple
administration visits necessary to receive a single administrative service directly correspond with clients’
opinion that service is slow. This is also confirmed by the fact that it is generally municipal administrations that control the observance of the legally-regulated, maximum time-limits for administrative service delivery.
Figure 5.
Overdue Procedures per 1,000 Administrative Services
Source: Report of the Minister of Public Administration, January–August 2001.
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
0
44
1 to 10 [Number of municipalities]
50
7
11 to 20
3
21 to 30
1
31 to 40
1
41 to 50
1
51 to 60
Figure 6.
Grievances (ASPLEA) and Maladministration per 1,000 Provided Administrative Services
Source: Report of the Minister of Public Administration, January–August 2001.
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45
0
55
1 to 10 [Number of municipalities]
50
26
11 to 20
8
21 to 30
5
31 to 40
2
41 to 50
4
51 to 60
The applied methods for quality control of service delivery by the municipal administration are under hierarchical control and based only on the assessment of a higher ranking officer. There are no written or organizational performance standards designed to evaluate the quality of administrative service deliv-ery. Regulatory requirements do not envisage the obligatory introduction of quality control systems of any type. The introduction of such quality control is a voluntary act on the part of local authorities, and certain measures should be adopted to clarify the benefits of its application for local self-governance, as well as the benefits of personnel training. Few mu-nicipalities have a certificate for quality under ISO (Troyan, Veliko Turnovo).